DxO Apps and Nik Collection multiple leftovers and inconsistencies

DxO PhotoLab Windows topics
1

Hi,

As time goes by, various versions of the DxO products are released and leftovers (useless folders and files belonging to previous versions) are accumulating on your system. The installers of new versions never cleanup folders, files and appdata when installing a new version that is changing things in these areas. This is especially true for the Nik Collection 6.3 installer.

I recently cleaned up my disk and here is the list of the folders that you should keep, provided you have installed the latest version of all products as of today. AFAIK and IMHO, all the rest can be removed :

Executables
C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection 6
C:\Program Files\DxO\DxO FilmPack 6
C:\Program Files\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 6
C:\Program Files\DxO Labs\DxO ViewPoint 4 inconsistency ! - should be in \DxO
C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection 6\activationTool.exe
C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection 6\bin
C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Perspective inconsistency ! - should be in \bin

Program Data
C:\ProgramData\DxO\Nik Collection 6
C:\ProgramData\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 6

C:\ProgramData\DxO Labs\Licenses inconsistency ! - why not everything in \DxO ?
C:\ProgramData\DxO Labs\DxO FilmPack 6
C:\ProgramData\DxO Labs\DxO ViewPoint 4

AppData
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO PhotoLab 6
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\DxO.PhotoLab.exe_StrongName_addo3jomrfkt2faiwwfxxb444r1xfvlh
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Sharpener Output
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Silver Efex
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Viveza
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik Collection 6
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Analog Efex
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Color Efex
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Dfine
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 HDR Efex
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Perspective
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO\Nik Collection 6\Nik 6 Presharpener

C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO_Labs\DxO ViewPoint 4
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\DxO_Labs\DxO FilmPack 6

C:\Users<user>\AppData\Roaming\DxO\Nik Collection 6\logs

You’ll probably see much more than the above on your own systems.

NB : Please note that some of these folders (Nik Collection) are not created until you run the plugin for the first time.

One could also wonder about the existence of the various DxO vs. DxO Labs folders. IMHO, all of this should be made more consistent and the installers should cleanup when overwriting a previous release.

You could of course uninstall, delete everything DxO in the mentioned folders and re-install if you don’t care losing your databases, favorites and presets. Your choice.

Same questions for the registry :

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DxO
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DxO Labs
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DxOLabs

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DxO
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DxO Labs
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DxOPhotoLab6

In both cases, do we really need 3 different DxO keys ?

2

There uninstall has always been poor leaving enormous volumes behind. It never removes the old databases and related folders which can be very big if you use it as a DAM. The uninstall should ask if it removes the old stuff or leave it in case you need to roll back which would warn any one not uninstalling them they need to if they don’t reinstall the old program. We have had a number of posts complaining of this over the years but nothing ever changes/improves.

3

I won’t argue about installers not cleaning up properly but I don’t think I’ve ever come across any uninstaller that actually uninstalls everything.

As for making things more consistent. I can’t imagine that is a trivial task. Such inconsistencies develop because of legacy code structures that have to be worked around when new features, which were never dreamt of when the original code was written, are added.

And while inconsistencies are being mentioned, there’s the old chestnut of Win / Mac differences.

4

Same on Mac. Lots of things get left behind. Worst is the Nik Collection, which spreads items all over the drive. → I usually clean out things through searching for respective items with “Find Any File” or “EasyFind”, both GUIs for the “find” CLI command with its truckloads of options.